Letters for January 8, 2004

In Motown, even scraps will make 'em grateful: It's amazing the difference in standards for sports fans in South Florida versus Detroit. Miami Dolphins fans are calling for coach Wannstedt's head on a platter (Bob Norman, January 1, "You Move, You Lose"). After all, the Dolphins won only ten games this season.

Up north in Detroit, Lions fans rejoiced over their success this year, winning five whole games, versus three last year. One would've thought that their final game against the Rams had playoff implications, the way the fans were screaming and celebrating.

Flash back to late September. Florida Marlins fans yawned among the 50,000 empty seats as their home team steamed toward the playoffs.

Meanwhile, back in Detroit, Tigers fans reacted with glee that their beloved home team finished with only 119 losses! The horrible, wretched, 119-game-losing Detroit Tigers actually outdrew the World Series Champion Florida Marlins during the regular season! Let's see here... Dolphins fans grouse and complain about winning only ten games this year. Lions fans rejoice over winning five. Tigers fans leap for joy at the hope of future years simply because they avoided loss number 120. But Marlins fans are completely apathetic all year long, not bothering to show up until they won their first playoff series.

There is something dreadfully wrong with this picture!

Kurt Kelly

West Palm Beach

Are you listening, Pulitzer board? First, I gotta say that I don't normally write to Journalists, but this time I had to make an exception. Bob Norman's column was Pulitzer stuff, and I couldn't have agreed more with what he said. I have been grieving instead of celebrating the decapitation of Pudge.

I wish Bob would do me a huge favor as a fan of his writing: Send me a signed copy of the article, and I will hang it as a work of art in my home. I sincerely mean it when I say he hit it right on the head point after point.

Joseph Goldberg

Parkland

Gracias, muchacho, but next time, get it right: Wow, thanks. Psycho Daisies really appreciates getting number one (local) album ("The Best of 2003," January 1). Stuff like this is one of the things that keep us going. Out of all the reviews, you really described the sounds and emotions of the CD perfectly.

One thing ya keep getting wrong. Snowflakes Falling on the International Dateline is the fifth Psycho Daisies CD.

Thanks for an extra happy new year.

Johnny Salton

Via the Internet

Wake up, Yankee: I appreciate Bob Norman's work, and I'm a regular reader of his column. His "A Christmas Confession" (December 25) was something that needed to be said. The sooner that Americans wake up to the Taliban among us, the better.

I've heard of a book called Fundamentalisms that links all aspects of the religious right globally, whether they are Christian, Muslim, or Jewish. So your broader theme in this and previous columns is not that far off. Sure hope someone other than the choir is listening!

Ain't it grand that the Buddhists are the only ones who don't seem to have an agenda?

Rick Sargeant

Fort Lauderdale

In un-God we trust: I'm president of American Atheists Inc. (www.atheists.org). I started 2004 by reading Bob Norman's "A Christmas Confession." It was very enjoyable and well-written. Thank you for it.

Ellen Johnson

Via the Internet

Next, a soft Christian version of Black Sabbath: I too have been persecuted by these Christians, but only for laying into Christian rock and Christian hip-hop. I called them hucksters for Christ by taking average musical talent copying talented and original artists like Pearl Jam and putting their own Jesus spin on everything. When I wrote a one-star review for some Eminem rip-off named KJ-52 from Cape Coral, Christians came a-callin' from all over Florida saying I didn't get it.

Mark S. Krzos

Fort Myers

So does this mean we get a restraining order? Here is an article theme that you might consider for your brilliant and insightful page:

A moral degenerate turned political agent goes hunting for Christian fundamentalists and shoots one dead and ties him over the hood of his Pierce Arrow, and the Devil rewards him with 70 Islamic virgins in Islamic Paradise. The reward is merited for destroying the fundamental moral base of a Christian nation, the United States of Manhattan.

But the moral degenerate turned political agent through political indoctrination that he had to accept to keep his stinking little job was really dreaming, and when he woke up, he went hunting for real, to shoot and eat a Christian fundamentalist preacher. So the reporter/ writer/moral degenerate/political agent bought a rifle with a scope from an elf who was really a demon, and when he aimed and shot the Christian, the round and the firing pin were mounted backward, so the slug went into the right eye of the morally degenerate writer, and he felt like he had been kicked by a Clydesdale, and the back of his head was numb and felt huge, as if the bony skull had become elastic and stretched like rubber when acted upon by the shock wave of the slug that penetrated his right eye.

But the degenerate writer/political agent could not understand why he was not dead, and as he sat there, stunned, the preacher walked up to him and said: "David did not pray for Goliath to go away; he hit him in the head with a stone, and then he cut off his head with his own sword."

Then the writer degenerate/political agent looked to the left as the demon that had sold him the backward rifle approached him and said: "You failed to destroy Christianity in the United States of the Christian Pilgrims, so you must pay the price. For attempted murder, your soul is damned to eternal agony; you will never die. You will live your last painful moments every day, the slug in your round and watery right eye, the heat and the pain, and the elastic and insane expansion of your cranium."

Then the Christian fundamentalist preacher leaned over and whispered into his ear: "There is a time to live and there is a time to die, and God the Almighty made time, space, and the physical laws of ballistics, the laws of chemistry by whose principles gunpowder exploded that projectile into your ocular orbit, and he also made your mind, which conceived of a joke about killing Christians. But now the joke is on you, because Fidel Castro spoke over the radio last night and mentioned how Christians were fed to the lions, and he also mentioned that they don't have enough nurses in the United States of Brown Recluses and Copperheads. Do you know what Castro meant by all that, Mr. Reporter/Political Agent?

I hope you will consider this letter as you write your next piece promoting moral weakness, invalidating the moral principles that keep steak on our platters and a Crown Victoria in our garages. Remember, it is people like you who motivate al Qaeda to attack the "Great Satan."

Burt Alvarado

West Palm Beach

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